Quote:
Originally Posted by navyinrwanda
[*Content-neutral time, place and manner regulations also cannot be arbitrary or irrational. They must further an important government interest in a way that is substantially related to that interest. Hopefully, similar regulations on Second Amendment activity will receive similar judicial scrutiny.]
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Yes, but can it, for instance, require an "elevated need" on the part of every person who wishes to exercise it in public? Can it require that all who wish to exercise it be able to show greater than average ability in some fashion? No other right is treated in that way, but I have no trouble believing that the judiciary will insist on treating
this one thusly.
Is preventing exercise of a right
itself a valid "important government interest", most especially when misuse of that right can cause grievous harm or death?
I am
incredibly skeptical of the application of intermediate scrutiny to the right to keep and bear arms, because the very things the right purports to protect are
by design dangerous. If "public safety" is the "important government interest" and direct interference with the exercise of the right to keep and bear arms is substantially related to that interest (and if one ignores the fact that criminals by definition spit in the face of the law, then how can one argue that it is not?), then there is absolutely no hope for the right if intermediate scrutiny is the standard of choice to use for deciding whether or not a given law is valid in the face of the right.
And note that scrutiny is
itself a means by which the judiciary decides, on a case by case basis, whether the right is
really worth insisting upon. I fully expect that the wording for that was merely the Supreme Court waxing poetic, and that it didn't really
mean what it said. And in my mind, that casts grave doubt upon whether the Supreme Court meant
any of what it said in
Heller, save for the "longstanding prohibition" language and "sensitive places" language (i.e., the language which would uphold restrictions on the right).